The right swipe?

Finding the perfect partner to spend the rest of our lives with has always been part of human society. In traditional dating, it is often seen that people look for a partner with similar characteristics, also called homogamy. A new mechanism that enables people to find this potential partner in the modern world is mobile dating. Mobile dating applications hold certain features, which to some extent enable match selection based on personal preferences. One of the most popular mobile dating applications used worldwide nowadays is called Tinder. This widespread mobile dating application has filtering features such as photos, name, age, education and profession, location, and biography. Since we live in an era where the number of higher educated women has increased and women have become more accepted as intellectual equals, educational homogamy might be different in comparison to other aspects of homogamy, especially in the modern dating environment. Hence the following research question is posed: “How does homogamy play a role in Tinder users’ search for finding a potential partner on Tinder?”. Through 13 interviews with 13 Tinder users with an MBO or WO educational background, many interesting insights into potential partner selection on Tinder were found. A thematic analysis was performed on the data, which shows the motivations of Tinder users to start using the mobile dating application and the different steps that Tinder users go through when selecting their potential partner. This Tinder partner selection showed to be based on the features of Tinder, where users first looked at appearances by swiping through profile photos. Secondly, Tinder users looked at profession and educational level, with a difference between the selection process of MBO and WO educated respondents. Most MBO educated interviewees started working at a younger age than WO educated interviewees. Consequently, MBO educated Tinder users valued the profession of the potential partner more than educational level. Though for the WO educated interviewees, this was the other way around. Also, WO educated interviewees seemed to have some prejudice about MBO educated people in general. Subsequently, it will be interesting to see the social effect of educational level and the interference of Tinder in society in the future. Lastly, interviewees looked at two other features of Tinder, the biography of the potential partners’ profile as well as shared mutual friends. In the end, one of the reasons why Tinder users would leave Tinder again was because they had found a new romantic partner.